Planning for summer fun: our summer holidays activities list

At the start of each of the last two summers with Jessica, we sat down and made a list of some of the activities we wanted to do. A mixture of big days out or adventures and smaller activities. It was a fun way to plan our summer holidays and the girls and I loved doing it. We didn’t do one last year. I didn’t have the heart to plan summer adventures without Jessica; plus Thomas being due to arrive partway through the holiday made it difficult to plan any adventures. We still had some fun moments but it was a much more subdued summer than in previous years.

 

I am sure Jessica would want me to continue to plan adventures with Sophie and Thomas though and so one afternoon after school, I sat down with Sophie and asked her what kind of things she wanted to do in the summer holidays. Once again, we’ve come up with a mixture of things – simple fun activities to do at home or out and about locally, and a couple of bigger planned activities. Here are the things we have on this year’s summer activities list:

 

 

• JoGLE for Jessica – three years ago we travelled from Land’s End to John O’Groats by bus and train to raise money for Little Hearts Matter. This summer we’re planning to do the trip in the other direction in memory of our beautiful big girl. She loved our big train adventure. It will be quite bittersweet to do it again without her.

 

• Play music together.

 

• Play board games.

 

• Watch a show – I’ve booked to see an outdoor theatre performance of The Wind in the Willows. Fingers crossed the weather stays dry!

 

• Go swimming.

 

• Putting on a show – another planned activity. Sophie is taking part in a two-day theatre workshop later in the summer.

 

• Go to the funfair.

 

 

• Have a barbecue.

 

• Go to the beach.

 

• Splash about in the paddling pool. Maybe we’ll get the big birth pool out in the garden too!

 

• Have a film night.

 

• Go to the zoo – this is another planned trip as we’re going on a day out with other families from Halo Children’s Foundation.

 

• Do some jigsaws together.

 

 

• Do some crafts.

 

• Blow some bubbles.

 

• Find some lions – later this summer, a pride of over 40 colourful lions will appear in the Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead. We’re looking forward to trying to find them all!

 

• Have ice-cream.

 

• Footprint painting – this is a fun outdoor activity which the girls used to love doing. I think Thomas will be too small to join in properly but I’m sure we’ll get a couple of footprints from him too!

 

 

• Bake cakes.

 

• Have a toy hunt in the garden – Sophie loved our garden safari hunt so much that we had to include this on the list.

 

• Read stories in the garden.

 

• Have a picnic.

 

• Fly a kite.

 

• Go to the park.

 

 

• Visit family.

 

• Do a trail.

 

• Have a party! We’ve got two planned for this summer – Thomas’s first birthday party and Daddy’s 40th birthday party.

 

 

I think we should be able to tick most of these off our list during the summer! At the very least it gives me plenty of ideas for keeping Sophie entertained and I love that there are plenty of things that are simple, easy activities on the list.

 

Do you make a summer holidays activity list? What kind of things are you hoping to do over the summer?